Any similarities between the rapist she described in the book and the actual man named Barry were purely coincidental, as she had indeed used a pseudonym.

Earlier this month, Dunham apologized for inadvertently (according to her) impugning the real-life Barry. But this man never had sex with Dunham, or even met her-facts that conservative critics of Dunham were eager to prove, given how specific she was about her rapist's party affiliation. There's no suggestion that the name 'Barry' was a pseudonym, though the book comes with a general warning that 'some details and identifying details have been changed.' Still, it's billed as a memoir, and the expectation is that the events depicted actually happened.Īnd in fact, there was a campus Republican named Barry at Oberlin at that time: one that many interested readers were able to dig up on the internet with ease. The book identifies the perp as 'Barry,' the campus's resident conservative, who wore cowboy boots and worked at the library. In Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham recounts a specific instance of sexual assault during her time at Oberlin College.

Indeed, the person Gawker outed was not even a Republican activist-the key identifying detail attributed to the attacker in the memoir. Several journalists have dedicated considerable time to investigating the sexual assault that Dunham chronicled in her memoir, Not That Kind of Girl their reporting, and all information made available by Dunham in response, suggests that the attacker in the story may be a composite character based on her impressions of several dfferent people. Trotter recently made the decision to publish the name of the person he now presumes to be Lena Dunham's alleged rapist.

Gawker rape video